FAITH AND LUTHER


ON FAITH
AND
LUTHER
.
The Age of UNreason.

There is a good reason that faith is called blind.

Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to believe! -L.J. Peter

Here we take issue--not with the current organization of the Lutheran Church--but with one statement of Luther himself. A small quote, but important.

Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding.
luther; 1483-1546

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. -Horace Greeley

Or else what? What if reason got trampled? All power would go to a heirarchy. All social and scientific development would cease. Things would never change. There would never be a new thing under the sun. Orthodoxy!

First, quickly... let's differentiate faith from trust --a related meaning. But! There are very important differences. Trust is rational and reasonable-- it's based on a supporting collection of experience and testable evidence; where faith is not. When you close your eyes and fall stiffly backwards into the arms of friends, that's trust, not faith. You know the people and believe --based on past experience-- that they will catch you. (Still, you don't know it--you just think it's very likely.)
Y'notice... I tend to use the value of (mild) shock to get people off their duff and compose their thoughts.

So. Let me address "faith" (somewhat provocatively). On my dictionary page:

  • FAITH: The trust placed in the value of ignorance. The contrary of wisdom. (see "doubt" and "wisdom") Ambrose Bierce: "Belief without evidence... in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

    Faith places the Tooth Fairy on the same level as God, as both would satisfy the same level of proof. I for one, think whatever-gods-there-be would not like that!

    If, as most religions claim, God made us complete with brains, why would He be offended if we use them? In the "gospel according to Jon" ;-), God said "I gave you a brain... and no proof of me. You're supposed to be agnostic. It was a test of your honesty and integrity, kids!"

    If we take a story as not literal, but meaningful, it is not lessened. (blood from wine? Wine from water?)

    I know; all that seems mildly shocking. "Faith" conjures up the feelings of warmth, sweetness, trustworthiness. This amazes me. Hasn't anyone actually looked at what it really means? Or is it fish-water? Imagine if the word/concept had never existed, and you were now introduced to the idea. You'd say
    . "WHAT?!, are you nuts? You tell me something utterly fantastic--with absolutely nothing to back it up--and I'm supposed to forcibly (destructively) suppress every neuron in my head, and swallow any authority's line, along with the hook and sinker? What could make me do that? What's good about that?"
    . People know better, deep inside. The demand forces them to be two-faced, and worse: hide their real face!
    . This realization --usually subliminal, I bet-- probably does more to make the average belief-level thinner than does any other doctrine. Once consciously realized, it makes people resentful. This does religion no good.
    I predict that all but the purely reactionary religions will quietly move away from it, as most are in a (glacially slow) evolution anyway. (BTW, a glacially slow evolution of policy just doesn't make it any more. An elastic band is stretching, as the world's awareness moves so much faster than that of those churches, and the traditional, most-resistant churches are (voluntarily) in the weak end of the elastic!)
    . Obviously, I don't equate "feeling with your heart" with "faith". They're more opposites, aren't they? I'm all for the former --literally: The more, the merrier. But a blind negation of our natural abilities and common sense... that's not warmth, sweetness, or trustworthiness, is it?

    To do good things because you are told to... is not virtue.

    To scrupulously avoid all evil for a lifetime... has not a shred of virtue in it... if it was done only to comply with an order (explicit or assumed), or for the approval of another.

    What we call "God" might be the feeling of interconnection with the whole of existence, rather than what's personified as a bearded, toga-wrapped wise old man sitting on a cloud! [note Standard Disclaimer #1: this does not say that some actual god does not exist.]

    .Science as a "faith"? I'm sure somebody's written a good piece on this... wish I'd run across it. While it may be technically true, it's vastly different to rely on trust in a body of millions of trained scientists (past & present), each of whom's career may benefit from finding mistakes in the work of an experimenter, all of whom use a prescribed methodology --as compared to trust in a few (often a single person) who claim something fantastic that has no proof.

    There's a part of all religions that deeply understands the feeling that "Earth is our mother & that we are literally a functioning part of it. SO... I hereby claim as Gaians --not X% of their entire membership-- but X% of *each of their individuals! X% of *everybody is a Gaian!

    Did the design of "Santa Claus" take after "God"? Think of this: Both are omniscient ("He knows if you've been bad or good..."), Santa's almost omnipresent on Xmas Eve, with the speed he must go (Hundreds of houses per second). They even look like brothers: long white-bearded, white, male.
  • What is "faith" but a vow not to ask reality about its true nature. No doubts, no examination, and certainly no experiments! Faith --in anything-- is purposeful, voluntary ignorance.... in support of some fantasy. (purposely provocative, remember?)
  • Faith is a baseless belief in something you merely want to be true. This confuses fact with mere desire, which any intelligent person can see past. (where "baseless" means "no evidence for it".)
    Like a parent, a cop (or a god), would you want to hear: "I'll do as you say because you got the gun." ... "I'll do as you say because I was told to, and I have no power to decide for myself"?
    Wouldn't you rather hear: "I'll consider doing as you say because you are a good and wise person." Don't you think any sane conception of a god would want the same from you?
  • It is courage: to speak your convictions when others have sold theirs. A "sale" may be all interior --a sale to a facet of his personality that's in greater denial. E.G.: a fundamentalist who learns about evolution, and would believe it, except that his greater, authority-given "belief" is in contradiction to it.

    Faith says "do as you're told, because you're incompetent to decide or learn for yourself. Do not doubt, do not examine, do not think." Obviously, that could lead anywhere --to any abuse of power. Faith is about authority, subjugation, and the obedience of incompetent people--an incompetence that the leaders created, purposely or not. Faith is a seeing-eye dog and a blindfold. And they'll even sell you the blindfold! Faith is an obvious path to power over the faithful. It is too easily abused, and is done even without awareness of the abuse.

    To have faith, you must be taught from childhood --hard-- to resist and deny your innate, natural, healthy capabilities and growth. Isn't that the definition of brainwashing?... however subtly it may be done, or however benevolent the intent. This is what cults do; even the common, old, huge ones.

    On the other hand... if you know the scientific system, you know how it's guarded by peer-review and the carrot-versus-stick of fame and position... versus loss of all that when the inevitable re-experiment shows his errors. In that check-and-balance system you can put trust --no faith required. (again, that does not mean that what you trust in . will always happen.)

    e.g. I've never been in a war, but the total of what I've seen and heard convinces me that it really is hell. I trust that my conclusion is more-or-less accurate --because I get it from many sources, and the data fit with each other. Where it might not, I reserve doubt. Same for a claim about any historical event, person or discovery.

    Some people have faith that there are Leprechauns. It can't be called trust because they really have no experience of anything related to Leprechauns that can be called into play to support their belief. The only trust involved might be in a person that tells the story. ...if you positively know that it's impossible he be deluded or mistaken!

    Reason is the only light we have to see by. Reason is about freedom, trust and self-reliance. A way to ask reality what it really is. The faith-pushers tell us to put out our light to see better.

    Archimedes' "Eureka!" experience is relative to a Zen enlightenment. Actually, a scientist is a dedicated follower of ritual and discipline --he practices the Scientific Method, which is a ritual and strict discipline --the best way to discover and commune with nature. After all...
    The highest worship is to know the object of your affection as best you can.

  • Spirituality is a feeling of awe automatically engendered by fear from superstition --or... which would you take?-- it's a feeling engendered by contemplation of something grand in a different way than yourself --such as nature.

    Real freedom is enjoyed only by those who think for themselves and act accordingly.

    Other Luther quotes (sounds a lot like Machiavelli): "An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects."

    "No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody." ...and: "Heretics are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard... perish by fire... the Pope, who is the Devil in disquise."

    "...women ... should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bring up children."

    ...mankind has a free will, but it is to milk [cows], build houses, etc, and no further." This repulsive attitude resulted in the deaths of perhaps 180,000 people in May of 1525, when Luther advised 3 German princes to put down a rebellion that was really a demonstration for human rights!

    And from St. Ignatius of Loyola: "We should always be ready to believe, if the heirarchy of the church so decides, that what appears white is really black."

    .

    On the other hand... more reasonable quotes.

    Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few." Goethe.

    "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool, he who dares not is a slave." William Drummond

    "Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith." Thomas Jefferson

    "Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law onto itself, and suffices by its natural force to secure the welfare of men and nations." Pope Pius IX!

    "True virtue is life under the direction of reason." Spinoza

    "If faith is (part of) the methodology, shouldn't all (unreasonable) claims be accepted, to keep one's methodology consistent?" 2THINK.ORG (Simplified: "To be consistent, if faith is your method, shouldn't you accept ALL unreasonable claims?")

    .

    LUTHER AND THE PEASANTS' REVOLT

    While, initially, Martin Luther had appeared to champion the peasants' causes (or the rebels may have read far more into what he said than he intended) his concerns were far removed from their day-to-day reality. His focus was on the doctrines and corruption of the Catholic Church which, for a time, he had served faithfully as an Augustinian monk.

    The rebellious peasants and townspeople of 1524-25 took courage from Luther's triumphs, and he was well aware of this. He had, on some occasions, given the peasants reason to think that he supported their cause, but this may have been how matters were interpreted, not how they were intended. His concern was spiritual reform, not temporal affairs, or at least so he affirmed. Nevertheless, his words and deeds have been viewed as one of the great betrayals of history. Marxist scholars, who have viewed the Reformation as an "early bourgeois revolution" against feudal authority, have been particularly severe with Luther, portraying him as having inspired the peasants to rebellion with his gospel of spiritual freedom and equality, only to turn his back abruptly on them when they claimed a full share of the fruits of reform.
    . . It is not going too far to suggest that Luther had some sympathy for the peasants. As early as January 1522, he had published a warning of the approaching upheaval:

    "The people are everywhere restless and their eyes are open. They can and will no longer submit to oppression by force. It is the Lord who is directing all this and who is concealing this threat and imminent peril from the princes. It is He who will bring it all to pass through their blindness and their violence; it looks to me as though Germany will be drenched with blood."
    At the time of the peasant crisis, what Luther may have feared most was the infiltration and spread of radical Anabaptism into the peasant armies.
    . . The radicalism of the time, bound up part and parcel with millennial religion, was something for which Luther had little patience. On earth, the system was the system. The established order was all there was and all that was meant to be. Religion had nothing to say about it:
    "Neither injustice nor tyranny can justify rebellion. Do not resist the man who wrongs you. A Christian serf enjoys Christian liberty. The article which proclaims that men are equal bids fair to transform the spiritual kingdom of Christ into an earthly and external kingdom: but the kingdoms of this world cannot function without inequality of conditions."
    Anabaptism, consisting of diverse religious elements centered on a common core of beliefs, constituted the first truly major competition which the Reformation, as Luther conceived it, encountered. Regarded as a descendent of the spiritual movements of the Middle Ages, Anabaptism proclaimed that the Scriptures were the sole foundation of faith, preached universal priesthood and differed from the Lutherans in its view of man, of society, of the State and of the sacraments.
    . . In Mühlhausen, Münzer became the preacher of the peasant army, and challenged Luther's reformation in two pamphlets: An exposure of the false faith of the perfidious world through the witness of St Luke's Gospel, expounded to a contemptible Christendom in order to remind men of the error of their ways, and, directed at Luther, A well-founded refutation and reply to the carnal creature who lives in comfort at Wittenberg and has treacherously, by the rape of the Scriptures, corrupted a pitiful Christendom. These were a call to rebellion, couched in bitter and ironic terms:
    "What do you know, you who live in plenty, who have never done anything but guzzle and quaft -- what do you know of the seriousness of a true faith? The poor and needy are so monstrously deceived that no words can describe it. By their words and deeds, the lords ensure that the poor man, anxious to earn his bread, shall not learn to read. And they arrogantly preach that the poor man should allow himself to be fleeced and despoiled by the tyrants."
    Münzer also had a variety of other names for Luther: 'chief of the prime porkers', 'Mistress Martin', 'the Pope of Wittenberg, pagan in body and soul' and 'the chaste prostitute of Babylon'. This alone might have been enough to alienate Luther.
    . . Luther saw nothing but chaos in Münzer's preachings. Fearing a victory of the dispossessed, which now included growing numbers of formerly prosperous peasants, Luther saw his task as deflecting or aborting the cataclysm. It threatened to sweep aside the reforms he championed. His attack on the rebellion took on a merciless tone. He accused the peasants of three "terrible sins against God and man": perjury, by breaking their oaths of obedience; blasphemy, by rising up in the name of Christ; and rebellion, by acting contrary to biblical teachings.
    . . In Luther's view, the wickedness of rulers did not justify or excuse "tumult and rebellion". He characterized rebellion as "contrary not only to Christian law and the gospel, but also to natural law and all equity".(38) In the end, he disassociated the Bible from worldly affairs --Christianity, in his mind had nothing to say about the abuse of secular authority-- branding himself forever as apologist for the ruling class and a social reactionary.
    . . And, the solution he put forward to the uprising:
    "Let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab [the peasants], secretly and openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you."

    . . This, from a man now considered a rebel himself!
    . . The princes and lords, both Protestant and Catholic, grasped the sword and crushed the revolt. Philip of Hesse, fresh from a campaign against the Hessian peasantry, joined Duke George of Saxony and lesser lords in an attack on Münzer's followers in the Saxon town of Frankenhausen. In this particular engagement, 9,000 peasants, armed mainly with farming tools, confronted crack cavalry and artillery units. When the battle ended, an estimated 5,000 peasants lay dead, while the armies of the princes and lords reported only six casualties. Mühlhausen, the peasants base, was made a ducal fief and required to pay the equivalent of $600,000 over a twenty-four-year period.
    . . Luther is said to have openly counseled moderation in dealing with the peasants, but his private letters are pitiless. One, written on June 30, 1525, contains a statement wholly reminiscent of one alleged to have been made during the Albigensian Crusade some two hundred years before. In that case, when asked how the orthodox might be distinguished from the heretics, the Abbot of Citeaux is said to have replied, 'Kill them all --God will know his own'. Luther's point of view was chillingly similar:
    "In the matter of dealing mercifully with the peasants: if there are innocent men among them, God will know how to protect and save them, as He saved Lot and Jeremiah. If He does not save them, it will be because they are not innocent..."
    In the same letter, he says the following of Münzer's influence on the peasants:
    "Anyone who has seen Münzer can indeed claim to have seen the Devil incarnate at the height of his fury. 0 Lord God, if such a spirit prevails among the peasants, it is high time to kill them like mad dogs."
    Martin Luther himself drafted a pamphlet in late April, "Admonition to Peace; A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia", wherein he showed cautious support to the cause of the peasants. Luther chastises the rulers, saying that many of the peasants' grievances are just, and asks of them to perform their magisterial duties with love. In the same tract, he also levels fire at the peasants. The peasants firstly have appealed to the gospel, and that is false since they could not all be elect; thus many of them must, by default, be under the command of the Anti-Christ or Satan. Secondly, he reminds them that Christian weapons are prayer and submission.
    . . Martin Luther, who had earlier appeared to show some sympathy for the cause of the peasantry, published a second pamphlet in regards to the revolt: "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants". In this tract, Luther, after witnessing the widespread effects of Müntzer's teachings, admonished the lords to quell the rebellion by any means at their disposal:
    "Dear Sirs, whoever can should stab, smite, and strangle. If you die thereby you could not die a more blessed death, since you die in obedience to God's order… The peasants have a bad conscience and an unjust cause and any peasant who dies is therefore lost, body and soul, and belongs to the devil for all eternity."
    It's estimated that over 100,000 peasants lost their lives in the revolt itself, and we may never know how many were executed and maimed in its aftermath.
    . . As for Münzer: He was tortured and beheaded at Frankenhausen.
    . . Other religious leaders, even more radical than Münzer, arose. Foremost among these was Melchior Hoffmann (c.1500-1543) described by one source as "the evil genius of Anabaptism".
    . . Though the times were infused with many currents and cross-currents, it was mainly Hoffman's so-called "Melchiorite" influence which resulted in the establishment of an Anabaptist theocracy in the city of Münster in 1534- 35. This was led by a Hollander, Jan (John) Matthys.
    . . Having banned adultery, 'King John' introduced polygamy. This may have been excusable on "emergency grounds", since the city now contained four times as many women as men. Moreover, thousands of children needed guidance and protection. Needless to add, all such measures were defended with a great wealth of biblical references. 'King John' trampled one of his wives to death because she had disobeyed him.
    . . Amid great suffering and desperate efforts by the Anabaptist defenders to procure help from outside sympathizers, the siege of Münster dragged on until June 25, 1535. Then, after a final assault by the besieging forces, most of the defenders were butchered on the spot. Condemned by a more leisurely process, 'King John' and other leaders were publicly killed by torture with red-hot tongs. Their bodies were then suspended in an iron cage as a lesson for all.
    . . It should be noted that, after Münster, the Anabaptists did not quit. Fleeing persecution from both Catholics and Protestants, small groups found safe havens, eventually establishing themselves as Mennonites, Hutterites, Moravians, and other such groups, which continue today.
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